Bulldozer vs Sandybridge (to wait or not to wait?)

[PerfectShot]

I think my PC must have just frozen up at home. It seems to crash somehow but I still find the fans running. Doing a clean shutdown still keeps the PSU and all the fans running too. Not sure what happened to the four and a half year old. Powersaving options are disabled - it's not hibernating or going to sleep.

Anyway, I'm thinking of moving my refresh schedule up from February to a few weeks out.

I've been meaning to hold out for the Bulldozer... Are there any reliable sources that it will trump Intel's current offering? If not, I might just go with a 2600k.

If anyone has heard anything, please post! I've not paid attention to the CPU world recently.


I'd be replacing the case, mobo, RAM, CPU and perhaps even the PSU. I think the GFX should be able to hold out for a while longer.

[JoshMST]

Nobody really knows where the chips will fall. My guess is that performance for the top end AMD part will be right around the 2600K in most applications. AMD will lose some, but they will win some of the heavily threaded workloads.

We have a little more than a month before we know for sure!

[PerfectShot]

Great, I'm looking forward for the review.

For some reason my PC is stable when I'm using it. If it's alone it seems to crash...

Hopefully the upgrade can wait until some numbers are out. Even better if it lasts until January. The more cores the better!

Thanks!

[Poci]

Wait for bulldozer and prices should go down on both ends.

[3dfxrain]

I'm waiting for something faster. Would go with SB at this point if I had to. Maybe BD, need more time to find out more about it. Though definitely SB right now. I'd wait for BD to mature for months.

[Activate: AMD]

it depends on what you really want and what you want to do with it. I'd be surprised if BD won many benchmarks besides the most heavily threaded ones, so for gaming the SB will probably be the better choice. On price the top-end BD is probably going to be near the 2600k so you won't be choosing on price. If I were you I'd reformat and see if that fixed anything (probably not) and try to hold off until the reviews drop, just in case. Otherwise, I highly doubt you'd be disappointed with a 2600k

[PerfectShot]

Yes, I primarily would use the extra power for gaming.

Civ V and BF3 justifies it. PC stayed on for about 30 minutes before it froze again.

I'll be patient. Winter is anyway more the time I'd use my PC extensively.

[uddarts]

i'd put a multimeter on the psu.


also check the 12v line after shutdown and while the psu and case fans are still running. during that period, you might see something in the 9v area.


ud

[Activate: AMD]

yea it does sound like your actual problem might be with the PSU. You could try getting a new one now in anticipation of an upgraded build and see if that fixes it

[PerfectShot]

I'll look more into it Thursday night. I don't think any beer got into the case, but if it did, the PSU is at the bottom. System was off for two days after the incident.

The PSU might be too weak for the GFX but it seems to look up when I'm not around... Only software I installed recently was Google Desktop. Windows 7 search failed me completely for non-indexed locations.


I'd love to wait as long as I can. The mobo and the 2nd highest leaderboard PC sounds awesome though. Combining SSDs with a standard HDD. 60 GB was too small that I had my SSD walk away on me.

Hopefully I can wait for the Bulldozer reviews to be out if I can't make it to January.

[Poci]

Nobody really knows where the chips will fall. My guess is that performance for the top end AMD part will be right around the 2600K in most applications. AMD will lose some, but they will win some of the heavily threaded workloads.

We have a little more than a month before we know for sure!

Concerning hevily threaded workloads.
I think BF3 will be a perfect tool to compare bd to intels current top end 990x. The game will use up to 8 cores, which gives the bd a 2 core advantage over a 990x

it depends on what you really want and what you want to do with it. I'd be surprised if BD won many benchmarks besides the most heavily threaded ones, so for gaming the SB will probably be the better choice. On price the top-end BD is probably going to be near the 2600k so you won't be choosing on price. If I were you I'd reformat and see if that fixed anything (probably not) and try to hold off until the reviews drop, just in case. Otherwise, I highly doubt you'd be disappointed with a 2600k

In single threaded appz or appz that use up to only 4 cores yes it will prolly perform like a 2600K. But raise the number of cores used by an app past that and I think we will see bd winning. BF3 being a perfect example, like I said, up to 8 cores will be used.

Civ V and BF3 justifies it. PC stayed on for about 30 minutes before it froze again.

How many cores will civilization 5 be using?

I'll look more into it Thursday night. I don't think any beer got into the case, but if it did, the PSU is at the bottom. System was off for two days after the incident.

The PSU might be too weak for the GFX but it seems to look up when I'm not around... Only software I installed recently was Google Desktop. Windows 7 search failed me completely for non-indexed locations.


I'd love to wait as long as I can. The mobo and the 2nd highest leaderboard PC sounds awesome though. Combining SSDs with a standard HDD. 60 GB was too small that I had my SSD walk away on me.

Hopefully I can wait for the Bulldozer reviews to be out if I can't make it to January.

Beer next to computer...... Baaaad combination. Good thing I dont drink alcohol anymore.

[Lenny]

How many cores is Bad Company 2 supposed to use? I'm wondering because on my AMD X6 @ 3.5 Ghz I see an average of about 50% CPU usage in game spread fairly evenly across all 6 cores. I once did some core scaling tests. If I ran with 4 cores I saw 64%, 3 cores 76% and 2 cores 93% average CPU usage. The load was always evenly distributed across the cores. I never was sure if that was the game or Windows distributing the load.

[Poci]

How many cores is Bad Company 2 supposed to use? I'm wondering because on my AMD X6 @ 3.5 Ghz I see an average of about 50% CPU usage in game spread fairly evenly across all 6 cores. I once did some core scaling tests. If I ran with 4 cores I saw 64%, 3 cores 76% and 2 cores 93% average CPU usage. The load was always evenly distributed across the cores. I never was sure if that was the game or Windows distributing the load.

Supposedly BC2 uses up to 6 cores, its Frostbite 1.5 engine
BF3 is Frostbite 2.0 and they added more multithreading

[PerfectShot]

How many cores will civilization 5 be using?

Beer next to computer...... Baaaad combination. Good thing I dont drink alcohol anymore.

Not sure. Just tried to look it up but most of anything game related is blocked at work. From some Google search summaries, it states that it prefers a Quad.


I tried playing with max players, max map size and max city states and it already took several seconds between the first turns... It would be awesome if a new PC would be able to handle really big maps without taking too long between turns. Hence my desire to wait as long as possible.


I've never had any issues with spillage near my PC but I guess there's always a first time. Wish there would be more cases that are closed on top.


PC had been running fine yesterday - the Teamviewer ID had just changed. The thing had been idling all day. I wonder if it did it again this morning...

Bulldozer - we're still waiting!

[Activate: AMD]

How many cores is Bad Company 2 supposed to use? I'm wondering because on my AMD X6 @ 3.5 Ghz I see an average of about 50% CPU usage in game spread fairly evenly across all 6 cores. I once did some core scaling tests. If I ran with 4 cores I saw 64%, 3 cores 76% and 2 cores 93% average CPU usage. The load was always evenly distributed across the cores. I never was sure if that was the game or Windows distributing the load.

sounds like it uses at least 6 there len

windows wouldn't be distributing any loads to keep it that consistent if the game wasn't using multiple cores